


Crushed

by intrepidheart



Series: Siken!verse [1]
Category: Supernatural
Genre: Angst, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Pining, Weecest
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-05-05
Updated: 2020-05-05
Packaged: 2021-03-03 03:40:22
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,329
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24028288
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/intrepidheart/pseuds/intrepidheart
Summary: Crushed. By the love they have for one another; by the weight of the world and everything they're destined to do to save it and each other.Or, standalone ficlets around Sam and Dean that are each inspired by the work of Richard Siken, otherwise known as Siken!verse. Tags will be updated as new chapters are posted.
Relationships: Dean Winchester & Sam Winchester, Dean Winchester/Sam Winchester
Series: Siken!verse [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1733344
Comments: 16
Kudos: 57





	Crushed

**Author's Note:**

> If you have read Richard Siken's poems, then you have seen Sam and Dean in his words just as clearly as I have. I hope I do his work some sort of justice, but for now, take this for whatever it is.
> 
> All credit and rights are and stay with Richard Siken for his words and his works.

_Can you see them there, by the side of the road,_

_not moving, not wrestling,_

_making a circle out of the space between the circles? Can you see them_

_pressed into the gravel, pressed into the dirt, pressing against each other in an effort to make the minutes stop—_

_headlights shining in all directions, night spilling over them like gasoline in all directions, and the dark blue over everything, and them_

_holding their breath—_

_I want to tell you this story without having to say that I ran out into the street_

_to prove something, that he chased after me_

_and threw me in the gravel._

_And he knew it wasn’t going to be okay, and he told me_

_it wasn’t going to be okay._

_And he wouldn’t kiss me, but he covered my body with his body_

_and held me down until I promised not to run back out into the street again._

_But the minutes don’t stop. The prayer of going nowhere_

_going nowhere._

_-_ Richard Siken, "The Torn-Up Road", _Crush_

_..._

Sam has a secret.

One he has been keeping for weeks now, weeks that tumbled into months like grains of sand slipping through his fingers. It’s become a weight on his chest, suffocating him, cutting off air and making his throat feel too tight whenever his eyes find his brother or his father. 

The stain on his tongue tastes like betrayal and no matter how hard he brushes, it won’t come off. His choice has turned the light off in his life, dampening the corners of the room to black and dimming the shine of Dean’s smile that he throws over his shoulder at Sam. 

Oblivious. 

Trusting. 

Believing that Sam will always be folded in the backseat of the Impala, sneakers on the vinyl and book in hand and eyes fixed on his brother.

Sam has a secret in a cream-colored envelope folded in half inside the zippered pocket of his duffel bag that is going to fundamentally change his path in life, that will redirect the course that his feet follow away from the shadow he’s always trailed after, fingers entwined in the elbow of that cracked brown leather sleeve he once associated with Dad but now can’t separate from Dean. The moment he decides to unfold it and lay it on the table, press his finger against the paper and let the inked words rise from the white page like soldiers from a grave, he knows it will seal his fate. 

And that’s precisely why he hasn’t been able to bring himself to do it.

He’s running out of time.

…

It’s August 23rd and Sam can’t stop staring at clocks. 

Their hands point at numbers like accusations, like a lawyer in a courtroom demanding the truth before a jury. Thin, black strips of plastic on a white face in a cheap red frame on a diner wall, and it consumes him, turns Sam completely inside out. His guts are on the table and Dean and John don’t even notice, just bend their heads over the beat up journal under John’s scarred palm as scrambled eggs are forked into their mouths.

Law school. Sam Winchester, a lawyer. 

Who would have thought? Him with a family that was built from the ashes up and molded into bodies made out of credit card fraud and the biting smell of freshly laminated I.D. cards, as if Dean could really pass as a fed at twenty two with that shit-eating grin. 

He hadn’t even known law was what he wanted to do, had never had some wayward leaning in high school that nudged him in that direction. But when the application form was pushed into his hands when he was finally able to finish a full semester just outside of Modesto, it just sort of clicked. Made sense. Came to him like he was surfacing from a fever dream, sweat drenched and panting and saddled with the knowledge that this is how it’s meant to be; how it’s going to have to be.

Sam’s still staring at clocks and Dean’s elbow is digging into his side. He pulls his gaze away to look down at that elbow, the bend of forearm up to what he knows is a shoulder corded with muscle, even though he can’t see it right now under the heavy leather jacket Dean’s tucked under. Dean still has yet to fill it out completely; Dean is broad but John is _big_ , papa bear and eager son, tripping over his feet to follow in the massive paw prints pressed into the mud beneath them on their way into the forest full of everything dark and miserable in the corners of the world. 

Dean would follow John over the edge of the Earth with just a nod of his head, and Sam would follow Dean into the mouth of a black hole and beyond—and that’s just another reason why he has to leave.

Because the elbow in his ribs is connected to the body of brother, protector, home, and Sam’s forgotten how to untangle the strings of everything that Dean is to him. He’s lost track of where Dean starts and Sam ends because it’s everything and nothing all at once. It’s become an enigma, the unsolvable equation in Sam’s head, the missing factor that will never let Sam figure out exactly what it is that they equal together.

Except he knows; deep down, seeded in the marrow of his bones and spread through the arteries and veins that make up his body, Sam knows what love is and how much of it he has for Dean. Too much. An impossible amount of much that will lead to nothing but Dean’s fist in Sam’s mouth and John burning his carcass like the monster Sam knows himself to be.

Dean finally looks up, tossing a glance at little brother and little brother can do nothing but stare back. There are no words that can rise up in his throat, that he can voice at this very moment without betraying himself. Because as much as Sam knows Dean, Dean knows Sam more, somehow, an imbalance in Sam’s opinion because he’s been studying his brother his entire life and yet he’s still missing those four years Dean has on him. 

Sam lays awake at night cursing the time that Dean had before Sam can recall, because he knows what it’s like to be under Dean’s focus, a slide under a microscope, and he wishes their roles were reversed. Wishes it was him who was able to wear the rubber gloves, lean in and be blinded by the supernova light that is his brother and examine him and ingrain him in every pore of his skin and every neuron of his brain.

Then Dean has to go and say something like, “You gonna eat that?”, before spearing Sam’s uneaten homefries off his plate and chewing them with his mouth open like a third grader. 

Routine twists Sam’s face into one of barely concealed revulsion at his brother’s maturity level while his heart does a triple lutz and fumbles the landing, sprawling across the ice rink of his ribcage as he realizes he has less than two weeks left of seeing this, of sitting so close to Dean that his entire side warms like a furnace, of breathing in Dean’s cologne and hearing his laugh.

It can’t come soon enough. It’s coming too fast.

Sam doesn’t know what to do anymore.

…

It’s August 29th.

One week.

The Winchesters have stopped outside of Casper, Wyoming to deal with a kelpie infestation and Sam hasn’t been able to do anything except count the miles between here and Palo Alto, California in his head. About 1,200 to be exact. To make matters worse, he overheard John’s passing comment that Pastor Jim has a lead on something mauling tourists in Chicago that they’ll make way for once this is said and done.

They’re going the wrong way—or rather, he’s going the wrong way. They can’t know; couldn’t know. Don’t know, and Sam’s put this off for far too long but he doesn’t know how to come back from it. He can’t seem to breathe right at all these days, verging on constant hyperventilation, pushing himself over the edge into full blown panic attacks whenever he has a minute to himself or can steal the bathroom from his stupid, vain older brother that won’t stop smirking at himself in the mirror and making Sam want to punch ( _kiss_ ) him. 

Dad is gathering his things, turning in a circle to find where he last placed his notebook, mumbling something about a library to find the layout of the park complex by the river. Sam is staring at the first page of Chapter 3 of _The Outsiders_ and reads the same sentence for the sixteenth time because his brain keeps shorting out, but that doesn’t stop him from hearing Dad mutter Dean’s name to get his attention.

The tone he uses is enough to make Sam’s ear perk up; he knows what Dad sounds like when he wants to talk about Sam to Dean. He unfortunately is usually the topic of irritation that Dad saddles Dean with since Dean is the only one who can handle Sam’s entire six foot package of anger, hostility and angst. Out of the corner of his eye, he watches Dad lay his hand on Dean’s shoulder, head bent forward, low words carrying across the room despite his best attempts to be subtle, though how one can try to be subtle in a 300 square foot space with two double beds is beyond Sam’s comprehension.

“See if you can’t figure out what’s going on with him. You know he’d… he’ll talk to you, if anything. I’m hitting the books.” Solid clap on Dean’s shoulder, affirmation of his belief that his son can handle the faulty one sulking in the corner while he escapes the tension of the room for a few hours. Probably more at the bar than the library, but Dean won’t say anything, so neither will Sam. 

“I’ll see you boys in a bit,” John says louder, now for Sam to hear. He drops some bills on the lopsided table by the front door before shouldering his bag. “Order in tonight, I’m going to be late. Take care of yourselves, boys.”

“Yes, sir,” Dean replies with a nod, turning to Sam the moment the door shuts behind Dad. The Impala rumbles to life and her sounds fade away as Dean makes his way to the armchair Sam has sunk himself into, draping himself along the back to peer over Sam’s shoulder. He stiffens. 

“What are you thinkin’, short stack? Pepperoni? Meat lovers? Or are you going to plague me with that veggie delight bullshit again?”

“Get whatever, I don’t care,” Sam says, turning the page to keep up the pretense despite not having absorbed a single word in the last half an hour. He can’t remember the last thing that even happened in the plot, but he can’t look at Dean without crumbling so S.E. Hinton is going to have to do it for now.

A hand Sam would be able to identify while blindfolded reaches from over his shoulder to pluck the book from his fingers to toss it onto the bedspread. Spinning around in the cushion, Sam levels a glare at Dean and is surprised to be met with equal frustration on his brother’s end.

“Okay, Sammy. Spit it out.”

“Spit what out?” Sam says, trying not to sound mocking, but a bit of it leaks in and Dean’s eyes turn to flint.

“ _It._ Whatever has been bugging you for the last 500 miles, at least, because we’re lost, man. What is going on with you?” 

“What’s going _on_ with me?” Sam’s voice hikes up to an embarrassingly high pitch. “Maybe I’m just PMS’ing, dude, you know how I love to throw bitchfits for no reason. That’s why Dad left, right? To get you to work it out of me? For you to act like a good older brother when both of you just want me to stop being a pain in the ass?”

Dean is suddenly in Sam’s space, swinging himself around and planting his knee on the seat between Sam’s legs so he can lean in close. Too close.

When Dean’s angry, his body vibrates with it; knuckles white where he’s gripping the top of the armchair, mouth turned down into a scowl, shoulders set and chest moving tightly. When Dean’s angry, he’s even more beautiful and it’s about to set Sam off, his internal temperature sky-rocketing to boiling point and he needs to get away from his brother.

"Move, Dean--” Sam manages to get a hand on Dean’s chest to push him off but Dean knocks it away and shoves Sam by the collar of his shirt deeper into the chair. The hateful words that had been about to leap from Sam’s tongue decided to roll into a ball and slide back down his throat, wilting at the energy pouring off of Dean. 

He’s done it, tripped the wire in his brother, and there’s no going back now.

“I’m tryin’ to ask you how you are and you manage to spin it around on me and Dad like we’re sick of carrying around an extra bag,” Dean snaps. Sam can feel his spearmint breath brushing his cheeks and he has to blink rapidly to keep his eyes from watering. “What’s gotten into you, Sammy? Since when do you stop talking to me, huh? This some puberty thing? You graduate from high school and you’re above it all now?”

Hit the nail on the head, bingo, Yahtzee, flashing lights on a gameshow board and Dean’s won the prize. Doesn’t know a thing about the envelope that burns Sam’s skin off every time Sam pulls it from his bag, yet can sense the disturbance in Sam’s magnetic field and somehow lands right on the money with the graduation comment. And it pisses Sam off, how Dean’s always spot on about him, and suddenly, he just knows that it’s happening tonight.

“God, Dean, it’s not about you--”

“You can’t look me in the eye and tell me it isn’t about me.” Dean’s eyes have softened though his posture and his tone have not. Because this is what they do around one another; they melt. “I know you, Sammy, and I’m askin’ you to trust me enough to tell me what the hell is going on in that head of yours.”

The words are suddenly suspended in the few inches remaining between them before Sam even had a moment to process what was about to leave his mouth: “I don’t have any more time.”

Dean visibly recoils, fear and alarm shifting his features as his fist tightens in the front of Sam’s shirt. Sam feels like he’s about to pass out, black edging into his vision as his heart thunders in his chest and his fingertips start to go numb.

“Sam.” He’s going to miss the way his name falls out of Dean’s mouth, even when he’s pissed off, especially in these times, because there’s so much meaning, so many feelings behind those three letters as they come out of his brother. He’s going to miss so much. “You better start explaining what that means right the fuck now.”

It all slams into him like a truck and Sam can’t breathe.

He says that, gasps it out as he lurches forward and practically falls past his brother and into the bed before getting his feet under him. Dean is saying something—yelling, actually—but everything has become white noise in his ears as the panic swoops up through his stomach and starts to swallow every ounce of oxygen from his brain. He’s moving on autopilot, fumbling the door open to stumble into the empty gravel parking lot towards the nearby road, praying that the humid autumn night will relinquish some of its air for his lungs to start working again. 

He’s barely sucked in a breath before he’s spun around, rocks twisting under his sneakers as Dean gets his hands on the tops of his arms and shakes him. The buzzing gives way to Dean’s harsh tone, the words that are biting at his ears, demanding to be heard.

“Sam, you better start talking, I fucking mean it, you can’t just drop that fucking bomb and try to run away--”

Impulse drives Sam to back up, to pull away from the one thing he can't imagine leaving and the one thing he knows he has to get away from. He makes for the road and the slope just beyond it, his brain feeling drugged and slow as he tries to focus on getting to a more open space and away from the blanketing presence that is his brother, the asphalt and yellow broken line disappearing under his strides.

But Dean doesn't give up, not on Sam, never has, never will. As quick as Sam's steps are as he tries to get away from his brother, Dean's are quicker to catch up. Dean is strong, always has been, and Sam both relishes and curses the feeling of Dean's hands on him again, just as the kick lands at the back of his knees. Sam lets out a shout as his legs give out, knees shrieking as they land hard on the gravel that gives way to dirt at the edge of the road before his brother's body is rolling over top of him to pin him down with a sharp grunt.

Dean is fuming, his body shaking along the line of Sam's as he lifts Sam up and slams him back down again into the packed dirt with a slew of swear words spilling from his mouth. They always were better at conveying their emotions through physical touch, Dean moreso than Sam. But right now, all Sam can see is green and hints of orange; the sunflower surrounding Dean’s pupils have almost been hidden entirely by the fear blowing the blacks of his eyes wide. 

This is going to be so much harder than Sam feared.

"Sam." It's the pain in Dean's voice that breaks him. "Please."

“I don’t even know where to start,” Sam answers weakly.

Dean’s fingers are digging into his shoulders to the point of pain, a small noise breaking out of Sam at the pressure. He’s going to leave bruises. It’s the least that Sam deserves. He has to ready himself to any kind of reaction from Dean, and a punch is the one most expected to be coming his way.

“You’d better try,” Dean hisses. “You’re scaring the _shit_ outta me, Sammy, _what are you talking about?_ ”

Sam thought it would be impossible for the words to leave him. Thought that he would have to keep fighting with himself, dredge out the cursed plan of action out of the dark hole he had been hiding it in and force it out. 

But this was Dean.

Dean, holding him, on top of him, angry because he was scared and he didn’t understand, angry because he wants Sam to be okay and safe, angry because Sam thinks a part of him already knows. 

They know each other in every way two people can know one another with the exception of _that,_ because Sam’s the one who’s sick in the head and wanting something Dean could never give him. Dean has those years, those resented years that Sam never had a chance to have, so of course Dean knows. Somehow, even if he doesn’t realize it.

So it all falls out of Sam’s mouth, a steady story of his final days of high school and the application form and the acceptance letter and the bright smiles of his teachers and the congratulations party his friends had thrown him that Sam had lied about and said was a graduation party instead. He holds Dean’s eyes the entire time and felt his heart slowly shrivel up and die in his chest as he watched the fear morph into horror into betrayal. He watches as he loses his brother while lying beneath him, the foot between their bodies stretching into miles by the time Sam managed to come to a halt.

Dean is a statue leaning over him, a Greek god carved into marble by the hand of a heartbroken sculpter. The lines around his eyes and mouth have marred his beauty into something beyond sadness. Sam thinks that if they had been standing, Dean might've fallen over. Sam may as well have reached into Dean's chest with his bare hands and ripped Dean's heart out while it was still beating; something about the look on Dean's face tells him that that might have hurt him less than what Sam just told him.

"You're leaving."

It's not a question that Dean asks. 

"I have to," Sam whispers.

Dean lets out a noise that barely passes as human, jerking forward until their noses are brushing. Sam’s forgotten how to breathe again.

"No, you don't. You don't _have_ to do anything, Sam. This is a choice. You're choosing this. If you're going to leave me and Dad behind, then you get to own up to that.”

Everything’s rising to the surface now; the feelings Sam swore off of thinking about, the way his stomach has turned into a mosh pit because their chests are brushing and Dean’s legs are bracketing his hips, and how the sharp points of the rocks under his back are going to leave him aching for far less time than the look in Dean’s eyes right now. 

Dean is smothering Sam in every meaning of the word, with his body and his breath and his anger, his hatred for Sam’s choice that wasn’t a choice, it’s a _need._ Because Sam isn’t normal but he needs to try to be, needs to get more space between him and his brother and this life that is surely going to end with Dean in his arms, covered in red with his life spread all over Sam’s hands, staining his skin and his clothes. 

“I’m not _choosing this_. I have to go, Dean, I have to--I have to _try_ to be something.”

“We save lives, Sam!” Dean shouts, rocking forward again with the force of his words. “Is that not good enough for you anymore?” 

“That’s not why I’m leaving and you fucking know it,” Sam says hoarsely. If Dean wants to see his hand, then he’s laying it on the table, straight flush right to Hell, his one way ticket. 

Dean stops, breathing hard. Every muscle in his body is wound tight, trembling, and Sam can feel it down his legs, against his chest, in the seat of his bones. Sam just toed the line they both know is there, the one that is squatting beside them in the gravel and measuring the distance between their mouths at this very moment. 

Everything in Sam’s being wants to crane his neck and find the taste of spearmint behind Dean’s teeth, and everything in Sam knows that he won’t do it. And for the first time, or maybe just the first time that Sam really notices, he can see his own twisted emotions mirrored in Dean’s face. Like if they were in another life, maybe brothers, maybe not, maybe following a road not so dark and stained with blood and ichor, it could happen. That their heads would tilt and they could meet in the middle, snap the tension that has lived between them for longer than either would admit. 

Minutes pass. Dean’s grip on Sam’s shoulders doesn’t lessen. Sam resigns himself to knowing that at least the purple marks that will be left behind are something he’ll be able to touch as a memory when Dean inevitably turns his back on his little brother, now traitor. 

They don’t speak, or maybe they can’t. Words don’t have any meaning anymore, not with Sam heading for a coastline that doesn’t have his brother in the bed beside him. All they have now is the heat of each other’s bodies and the knowledge that everything has changed.

Finally, Dean breaks the silence.

“You don’t have any more time.” Dean hasn’t looked away, his eyes holding Sam’s like they’re the only things left that are still anchoring him to the ground. “You said you don’t have any more time. So when? When are you g--” Something catches in Dean’s throat and he finally has to look away, his head dropping to hide his face.

_When are you gone?_

Sam doesn’t have a heart anymore; it’s shattered and the pieces have been swept away by the cold wind gusting over him and Dean as a car blows by them, its headlights blinding Sam as it passes. 

“I buy my bus ticket next week.”

It goes unspoken that it’s one-way. 

Suddenly, Dean leans forward, releasing Sam’s shoulders to instead wrap his arms around them as he presses his face into Sam’s neck. The cool night air has made the tip of Dean’s nose cold against the line of Sam’s throat, a contrast to the hot breaths gusting against his skin. Sam feels electrified and alive, feels like his lungs have folded in on themselves and given up entirely as Dean’s hold on Sam turns into a cradle.

Together, on the side of the road, Sam holds Dean to keep him from breaking apart and Dean holds Sam down as if his body could keep him from walking away. Dean doesn’t stop shaking and Sam can’t find a single star in the dark blue sky stretching over their heads. 

The only thing that remains amongst the broken boys on the side of the road are the headlights washing over them like reassuring fingers down their spines.

It’s as if every other light in the world has gone out.


End file.
